The location and current banding environment in NZ helped to stir things up a bit I reckon! The venue was not easily accessible to south island bands and a couple of other bands weren't able to attend for other reasons. This left a large pool of quality players looking for someone to play with (I'm not just talking about A grade either) and gave a few bands a bit of a leg-up and closed some gaps.

Next year is in Wellington, I expect there will be a much larger turnout and it will be interesting to see how this affects the standards and results.